Two Kirks Are Better Than One
by RuthR
Summary: To hell with 'Generations': Reboot!Kirk and the Enterprise encounter a mysterious force known as the Nexus, and Jim comes face-to-face . . . with himself. SHENANIGANS ENSUE.
1. I Mirage

**A/N**: _Okay, so I'm not totally sure where all this crackishness is coming from, but I thought I'd try my hand at an actual chaptered ST fic. These damn plot bunnies won't leave me alone, so this is the result._

_Summary: __To hell with 'Generations'. Reboot!Kirk and the Enterprise encounter a mysterious force called the Nexus, and Jim comes face-to-face . . . with himself. SHENANIGANS ENSUE._

_Warnings: T for Jim's love of profanity; slash of the Kirk!Prime/Spock!Prime variety. DON'T DISS THE OLD PEOPLE LOVE. Oh, and maybe a little bit of nu!K/S too. _

_Anyway, this is for everyone who hated the travesty of a movie 'Generations', likes Kirk!Prime, or just wants Spock!Prime to get some. _

_Short summary of 'Generations' for those of you who've never seen it: Kirk gets sucked into this time-vortex-thingy and stays there for a very long time wearing plaid and riding his horse and being all rustic 'n shit, and then Picard finds him and convinces him to leave his imagined 'paradise' so he can save the world, and then he gets squished by a bridge. And there's no Spock. Ever. For TNG, it's not a bad movie. For TOS, it's a great big wad of OOC suckage. _

_My apologies for messing with the timeline and pretty much bringing Kirk back from the dead. C'mon, consider who we're talking about here -- getting wiped out by a bridge really isn't enough to kill a Kirk. _

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**TWO KIRKS ARE BETTER THAN ONE**

I. Mirage

_In Which Jim Has a No Good, Very Bad Day_

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This really shouldn't have surprised him. Frankly, Jim Kirk was learning that days in which universe-ending paradoxes _didn't_ threaten his crew or fuck with his mind were mere anomalies. Still, one could never truly be prepared for this level of insanity.

He was floating. Okay, maybe not floating, exactly, since his feet were pretty firmly planted on . . . whatever it was, but it felt like he was floating, and that's all that mattered. It was dark too, as though someone had locked him in an anti-gravity chamber and turned off all the lights. Or maybe he really _was_ locked in an anti-gravity chamber with the lights off. Had he pissed anyone off badly enough this week to merit it? Jim wracked his brain but couldn't think of anything he'd done to deserve it; he hadn't even irritated Spock all that much. No more than usual, anyway.

Lifting up one leg slowly, he tried placing it back down. His foot dangled for a moment before dropping onto the ground and rebounding again, like he was standing on a sheet of elastic.

Well, this was weird. He wished he had a light so he could see what was happening, but he hadn't exactly packed up an emergency kit before he disappeared. One minute he'd been standing on the bridge, reading through a stack of reports Rand had brought him -- damn Rand and her slave-driving paperwork obsession -- and the next he was trapped in some sort of rubber force field/cloud/particle conglomeration. He was alone, with no way of knowing where the Enterprise was or how to contact her, and he hadn't taken anything along with him except his clothes and the wallet he kept tucked in his boot. He had no food, no water, and no weapon.

This really had to stop happening to him.

"Hello?" His voice echoed eerily in the darkness, but the silence was disturbing. It was quiet, unnaturally still, and he wondered with sudden interest if he was suspended out in space. Of course if that was true, he'd be dead, but then again, he might very well actually be dead at this moment. Stranger things had happened.

No one answered him, but Jim didn't think he could take the oppressive _nothingness _much longer. "Um, not to sound rude or anything," he called, "but I would like to get back to my ship now."

No reply -- not that he was expecting one. Mysteriously inscrutable and possibly sentient forces weren't usually that hospitable.

He supposed it made sense, in an old-fashioned karmic way, since the Enterprise's last few missions had been astonishingly peaceful and pleasant. There hadn't been any outbreaks of mind-altering viruses, diplomatic shit-storms, or accusations of witchcraft. Even shore leave had been uneventful: no one had gotten into a bar brawl or married somebody by mistake or "accidentally" smoked an alien doobie and ended up filling the mess hall with hundreds of replicated sandwiches to combat the ensuing attack of the munchies.

No, it had been a serenely boring three months, and it stood to reason that the chaos had just been waiting for the right opportunity to shake things up a little.

Well, he couldn't stay here long, as much fun as this was. He had things to do, people to see, places to visit, and heaven knew he couldn't leave Spock in charge for long under these circumstances. The Vulcan was a kickass science officer and an efficient commander, but he tended to go a little crazy when Jim got himself kidnapped. Which happened way more than it ought to, statistically speaking.

By now Spock had probably raised the red alert and torn half the ship apart in search of him; Jim had vanished straight off the bridge, so he didn't have to worry about his absence being overlooked, like that one time he'd been taken by slavers on Ervidius Ipsil. Everyone had assumed he was on shore leave at first, and it'd taken the crew three weeks to track them down when it became obvious that he wasn't shacking up with some babe in the mountains or hiding out in a bar. And once they'd found him . . . God, it'd been a nightmare. Spock wouldn't speak to him for days and Bones had hit him with more hypos than he could count for being a careless idiot.

First things first -- if he could push himself out of this containing cloud, or whatever it was, maybe he could find a source of light. He needed to know where he was.

Lifting up his foot with a little more force, Jim kicked at the rubber platform; his heel rebounded again, but the surface seemed to give way. Stretching out his arms, he jumped up . . . and promptly fell straight through the ground.

He was free-falling, colors whirling past his eyes, wind screaming in his ears and filling his mouth until he was choking for breath. His body turned, spinning head-over-heel, as he plummeted down and down and down . . .

And then, just as suddenly, he was lying against something cool and scratchy. Cautiously cracking open his eyes, Jim found himself staring at a patch of grass -- wheat-colored scrub-grass, like the kind that dotted the farmhouse yard back in Iowa. He sat up, a clump of wet earth clinging to his chin, and took in his surroundings.

It looked exactly like the Terran Midwest -- everything, down to the gently rolling slopes and soft muted tones of brown and green vegetation -- except . . . except somehow it was more. More and less, at the same time. It looked like an idealized portrait, a Kincaid painting when it should have been a Picasso. It didn't fit.

Digging his fingers into the soil, he pulled a handful up, studying it; even the smell was familiar, a dark tang of dead plants and salty water. Jim let the dirt sift into the grass and sat up, groaning at the stiffness of his back and shoulders. Apparently he'd taken a good hit, even if he hadn't actually felt the impact.

It wasn't silent here: bird-calls and wind and rustling grass swirled around him in a familiar cacophony that should have been soothing but wasn't. Every sound was just the slightest bit off, ringing false to his ears in the same way that the lay of the land seemed a little too perfect.

Shivering despite the heat -- which was odd in itself, as Jim didn't see a sun -- he rose and took a few staggering steps. His knees were weak, folding as he tried to walk, and he had to sit down for a minute and regroup.

At least he hadn't been attacked by anything yet; that was a definite first. Usually he had to tangle with some sort of creature that seemed hell-bent on turning him into a part of the local food-chain. On the other hand, it would have been nice to know what exactly had kidnapped him in the first place. Surely there was some reason that he'd been snapped up off his ship in the middle of a supposedly secure sector of the quadrant.

There didn't seem to be anybody else around; the view stretched on for miles, but Jim couldn't see any hint of civilization -- no buildings, no roads, no sign of sentient life.

Great. Anyway, he wasn't going to get anything done sitting here; Jim willed his legs to work as he stood and started down the little slope toward the creek that bisected the valley just below him. If he walked long enough, he might find some sort of clue, some sort of key that would lead him back to the Enterprise.

The grass crinkled underneath his boots; the wind ruffled the short strands of his hair, seeming almost to propel him forward. It was . . . pleasant, and that only made Jim wary. The old Terran adage 'Too good to be true' had survived so many generations for a reason.

Circling around a patch of oak trees, he batted aside a few low-hanging branches and froze.

On the other side of the stream was a log cabin, tucked into the side of the hill. No, it wasn't a cabin -- it was an honest-to-god storybook cottage, complete with a thatched roof and little carved shutters over the window and a shaft of sunlight picturesquely illuminating the house. Jim half-expected cartoon animals to pop out of the door and start singing.

"Seriously, who the fuck do you think I am?" he demanded of the universe at large. "Snow White?"

Of course no one answered, and Jim noticed a line of flat stones jutting up from the creek-bed from one bank to the other like a bridge. At least the cabin -- he was _not_ going to call it a cottage -- would provide some sort of shelter, and maybe whoever lived there wouldn't want to kill him.

Stepping off the bank, Jim put his foot cautiously on the first damp stone, but it didn't collapse, so he moved on to the next one.

"Hello?"

The voice startled him -- one boot slipped, he fell, and his head exploded. Or at least that's what it felt like. Jim clutched dizzily at his skull, inching over just enough to stop himself from tumbling into the water. His eyes were watering and he didn't dare move anymore for fearing of making it worse.

Shit. Oh, shit, it hurt. He wanted Bones here; he would take fifty hypos in the ass if it meant the pain would go away.

The sound of tramping feet made him crack open his eyelids just enough to see a pair of boots next to his face. A moment later the footwear was replaced by a face that made Jim forget the pain for a few seconds. It was a stranger's face, but somehow it seemed achingly familiar. His breath caught.

"Dad?" he slurred.

The man's eyes widened, and suddenly Jim decided that he'd been conscious quite enough for today. Strong hands gripped his arms just as he rolled off the rock into the river. Cold water rushed over his body, and then . . . nothing.

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_Thanks for reading! Please drop me a note and let me know what you thought._


	2. II Mirror, Mirror

_A/N: Oh, wow! I was blown away by the amount of story alerts and favorites on the first chapter -- thank you! Anyway, here goes the second part. _

_DISCLAIMER: I do not own Star Trek. Also, what's funny to me may not actually be funny. _

_Please let me know what you liked/didn't like/hated with a burning passion. It really helps me figure out the direction of a story. Thanks for reading!_

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II. Mirror, Mirror

_In Which Jim is Grateful for Safe Sex Education_

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The first thing to seep into Jim's consciousness was the unnatural absence of beeping life-support sensors, the muted noises of a busy sickbay, and Bones cussing him out. Instead his ears were treated to the faint trill of whistling.

_What the hell?_

Forcing his eyes open, Jim took a moment to center himself. He was lying in bed -- not one of those scratchy medical cots, but an honest-to-god mattress with a headboard and springs and everything. His head throbbed. The pressure wasn't unbearable; of more immediate concern was the fact that his uniform was missing and he appeared to be wearing _flannel_.

Oh, right. The fucking cottage, the river, and that guy who looked like . . .

Jim propped himself up on his elbows, wincing as the motion jostled his abused cranium. Someone was still whistling cheerfully, albeit terribly off-key, and it took a surprisingly long time to pinpoint the source.

A floor-to-ceiling stone fireplace (and who used _fireplaces_ anymore?) dominated the opposite wall, and pale orange light illuminated the sturdy figure standing in front of it. The man's face was turned from Jim -- he appeared to be absorbed in feeding logs to the flame -- but Jim stared at him anyway, drinking in what features he could.

Medium height; the compact stature of a once-athletic body that was way past its glory years; light, wavy hair washed through with grey . . . he could see just the edge of a Roman nose and a strong chin in profile, and Jim's breath came a little faster.

_No way, no way. He's dead. You know damn well that he's dead. There's no way ---_

He must have made some sort of involuntary sound, because the man instantly twisted around. The full impact of that face, the striking features rounded and softened with age, rendered Jim unable to stop gaping.

If the man was disturbed by the persistent eyeballing, he gave no indication of it. "Welcome back, young man," he said warmly. His voice was raspier than Jim had expected. "How's your head feeling?"

"Uh, okay, I guess."

"I wish I had painkillers on hand for you, but I'm afraid I don't even have aspirin tablets. I'll get you some water."

"I think I've had enough water, thanks."

The man smiled easily. "I suppose so."

Jim struggled to sit up; the man came forward to rearrange the pillows, and Jim got a closer look at his face. Laugh lines, fucking crazy sideburns, and hazel eyes.

_Hazel_ eyes.

"Are you alright?"

Jim couldn't answer, too consumed by his own absurd disappointment. He knew what his father had looked like -- he'd seen the holos, even though his mother tried to ferret them away -- and George Kirk had definitely had blue eyes, the eyes that made everyone look at Jim and see his father instead.

"You might have gone down harder than I thought," the man said quietly, somehow managing to sound both amused and concerned. "Try not to die on me."

"I'll try," Jim snapped.

There was a slight pause, but the silence wasn't uncomfortable. Damn, this was so _familiar_, like they'd had this conversation a hundred times before -- but Jim'd never met him before today. He was sure of that.

"So," the man began, too casually, "I don't get many visitors out here. Just passing through?" His gaze was direct, evaluating, and Jim had the uneasy sensation that he was being interrogated. Very politely interrogated.

"You could say that. Where is 'here'?"

"To tell the truth, I haven't quite figured that out myself, Mister ---?"

"You can call me Jim," he offered, feeling generous. After all, the guy had probably saved his life by fishing him out of the water , although he never would have fallen in the first place if he hadn't been distracted.

The man stiffened, one hand still propped on the pillows. "Excuse me? Your name is Jim? Short for James?"

"Um, yeah."

"Christ, why does this keep happening?" the man mumbled under his breath. Then he chuckled, a breathless sound that didn't have a lot of humor in it. "May I ask who your mother is?"

Jim didn't think it would hurt anything to tell him -- let the guy have his jollies. "Winona Kirk."

A strangled gasp made Jim lean back against the headboard; the old man was _glaring _at him, and Jesus, was that some glare. It would have done Spock proud.

"I don't know if you think you're being funny, but I don't have time for amateur comedians," the man said coldly. "Who are you really?"

Jim matched his tone with studied insolence. "I told you my name is Jim. Captain James Tiberius Kirk. Listen, Pops, I don't have any reason to lie to you about who I am. And who the hell are you anyway?"

"James Tiberius Kirk."

"I already said that," Jim said, deliberately using his 'smart-ass' voice. "Is your hearing going or something?"

"My name is James Tiberius Kirk -- Admiral Kirk."

Jim laughed. "No offense, old man, but I think you're a little confused. We can't both be James T. Kirk. It's impossible."

_Just like it's impossible for two Spocks to exist in the same place at the same time? _a little voice in the back of his mind drawled.

"I take that back," Jim said numbly. "Maybe it is possible." He ran one hand through his hair, studying his counterpart with a dawning sense of awe. _Admiral _Kirk? Holy fuck, he was an admiral? Either he really made something of himself in the future, or Starfleet really lowered their standards. "I think we're both telling the truth."

"What's the current stardate?" the admiral inquired in a way which implied that he still thought Jim was full of shit.

"2261.34."

The admiral blinked once. "Oh," he said weakly. "That . . . that doesn't make much sense, actually."

"Why? What date is it here?"

"I thought it was around 2293."

"229 . . ." Jim trailed off. "So somehow you're thirty-two years ahead of time . . . Wait. Oh, fuck. I know what happened."

Honestly, what was with all these future-selves appearing in the past? Or in the alternate past, if one was to get technical about it. This guy was old Spock's Captain, the one he'd seen in the meld on Delta Vega. This was James T. Kirk, from a different universe, maybe, but still him. There was no use denying it, or telling himself it was insane -- he _felt_ the truth of it.

"Okay, bear with me," Jim said, spreading his hands wide in a non-threatening gesture. "I'm gonna sound like a crazy man for a minute, but to the best of my knowledge, I'm telling the honest-to-god truth."

The admiral nodded, looking skeptical but much calmer than Jim thought he ever would if their situations were reversed. Sitting down on the edge of the mattress, he straightened Jim's covers fussily and wrapped himself in a blanket in the manner of a man steeling himself for something mind-blowing.

"Um, I'm James Tiberius Kirk, like I said, but I'm a James Kirk from a different -- dimension? Timeline? I'm not sure what to call it yet, but you get the idea. Anyway, somehow our two dimensions seem to have intersected at this point. I don't know why."

"Different dimensions?" the admiral said.

Jim knew what he was asking. "It sounds nuts, I know, but I've seen this happen before -- I met someone else from your timeline. See, this Romulan sort of tried to destroy the universe a few years ago, but he was from your time, not ours. He broke through a time-warp vortex and ended up in our universe. We almost didn't stop him. It's how I got the _Enterprise_, actually."

"You're in command of the _Enterprise_? How old are you?"

Jim tried not to scowl. "Twenty-eight, thanks. And how old are you?"

The admiral laughed a little. "Point taken. My apologies -- and I'm sixty, I think."

"You think?"

"Well, I seem to be in an alternate dimension right now, so you'll forgive me if I'm not up with the current time-flow." He frowned. "And why would this Romulan end up in a time-warp vortex at all?"

"One of Romulus's suns was going into supernova, and it ended up destroying the planet, and there was a black hole, and Nero and his ship just kind of . . . fell through it and into our universe."

"Romulus was destroyed?"

Jim studied the other man warily, but the admiral's astonishment appeared to be genuine. "Did that not happen in your time? It should have." God, could there be a _third _dimension out there, and this really wasn't Ambassador Spock's Jim, but some _other_ Jim? His head hurt just thinking about it.

There was a furrow forming in the admiral's brow. "When did this happen?"

Jim struggled to remember what the ambassador had told him about the incident. "Stardate 2371?"

Hazel eyes flew open, widening incredulously. "Are you sure?" he said urgently.

"Yeah."

The admiral looked stunned. "My God. I had no idea . . .It's so . . . the time is so . . .dear heaven. . . ."

Jim cleared his throat. "I suppose it's a bit of a shock." He glanced around, soaking in the comfortable, lived-in feel of the bedroom. "You look like you've spent some time here. It's nice and everything, but I have to get back to my ship soon, so . . . you wouldn't happen to know how to leave, would you?"

"I'm afraid not," the admiral said ruefully, pulling the quilt tight around his shoulders. "I should know -- I guess I've been here long enough."

"How long?"

"Seventy-eight years," was the soft, resigned answer.

Jim felt the first icy tendrils of fear stirring in his gut. Shoving himself up from the bed, he paced over to the window and let his head drop against the frame.

In the natural order of things, he should have already been back in Sickbay, getting yelled at by Bones after Spock had rescued him from whatever-the-hell-it-was that had it in for him that particular day. It was a routine, a necessary act in the farce that was his life, and everyone knew their parts and played them with the ease of repeated practice. Only now some asshole had rewritten the script without telling him. He was stuck this time, really stuck, and there wasn't a damn thing he could do. And to make things even weirder, he was trapped forever in purgatory with _himself_. It was hard to judge whether that particular twist of irony was the universe's way of indulging narcissism or whether it was just punishment for being the cockiest bastard in the galaxy.

From the expression on the admiral's face, Jim figured that the same thing must have occurred to him.

"How could you -- I mean, _seventy-eight years_, that's crazy."

The admiral shrugged. "As far as I knew until today, I'd only been here a few months at most. It's only when you mentioned the stardates that I realized . . . I probably would never have known otherwise."

Jim took a second to process this. "So time passes at a different rate here?"

"Perhaps. Or perhaps the surroundings are manipulated to make it seem so." There was a trace of bitterness in the man's voice. "Some paradise. Entire universes could collapse and you wouldn't know it -- wouldn't know that you should be dead yourself. Forced to stay young while the people you love grow old."

_Well, aren't I a cheery ball of sunshine in my golden years_. "I guess so." He wiped his sweaty palms on his pants. "So how do we get out of this place?"

The admiral just gave him a look. "Do you think I'd still be here if I knew that?"

Jim winced. Okay, not his brightest moment, but in his defense he'd been unconscious barely an hour ago. Bones's caustic voice popped unbidden into his mind: _Dammit, Jim, if you get one more goddamned concussion, I'm gonna staple your brain to the inside of your skull._

"You don't have a stapler, do you?" he blurted out.

The admiral stared at him for a moment, and then chuckled. "You sure did hit your head, didn't you?"

"Yeah."

"Maybe you should come lay down for awhile."

When Jim didn't move, the admiral grinned. "I don't have a stapler, so you're safe; I'm not sure where I'd get one anyway -- those things are antiques."

Jim walked over to the fireplace instead, testing the strength in his legs. Staring at the orange and gold flame, an odd question popped into his mind. "Hey, um, Kirk, when I first woke up, why did you ask who my mother was?"

The admiral's round face took on a ruddy overtone. "Well, the physical similarities are quite striking, and what you called me before. . ."

"You thought I was your _son_? If that was the case, wouldn't you have, y'know, known about me beforehand?"

"You'd be surprised."

Jim rocked back on his heels. "Correct me if I'm wrong, but are you implying that in another universe there are bunch of little illegitimate Kirks running around?" He didn't know whether to be impressed or freaked out by the thought.

The older man sighed, a long-suffering sound that reminded Jim oddly of Chris Pike. "Just one, actually."

"Just . . . I seriously have an illegitimate kid? Man, I was just messing with you . . ."

"Seriously. It was a bit of a surprise for me too."

"A surprise, huh? Didn't Mom give you the 'no glove, no love' speech?"

The admiral's eyes narrowed, and Jim suddenly decided that maybe he should build up the fire. Moving quickly to the safety of the opposite wall, he took his time picking out the perfect logs from the bin and didn't come back until that dangerous glint had left his counterpart's eyes.

"So if you have a kid, are there any grandkids in the future?" The notion was strangely appealing to Jim -- Grandpa Tiberius had been an awesome old coot, and at that age a guy could do any random eccentric shit and blame it on senility.

"I'd rather not dwell on it," the admiral said quietly.

Jim felt an explicable tug of grief in his own chest and took a few hurried steps back, wondering where that sensation had come from. "Oh. I'm sorry."

"No harm done. It's just difficult to talk about."

"Did something . . . ?"

"David's dead." The admiral was gazing down at his shoes, his back curled with tension. "He died before I really had a chance to get to know him."

"That's completely fucked up," Jim murmured sympathetically, that weird little pinch of sorrow fluttering up inside him again, before a horrible thought struck him. "Wait, if the timeline's -- what if _I_ have a kid and don't know it? Oh, my God, I'm a _father_!"

The admiral's no-nonsense voice cut through the beginnings of a serious panic attack. "Not unless you've slept with a woman named Carol Marcus."

"Carol Marcus? Are you fucking serious? You slept with _Carol_?"

"She does exist in this timeline then."

"Yes, but no way did I sleep with her! Ugh, she's like . . . she's like my little sister." Jim shivered a little. "She was our neighbor's daughter -- I've known her all my life, and I'm not into incest. And I always use sperm inhibitors before doing it."

"Well, congratulations, you're not a father," the admiral said briskly, poking at the logs to encourage the fire.

Jim sagged down into the mattress with a gusting breath of sheer relief. _Thank you, Mom, for that humiliating safe sex lecture_. Getting slowly to his feet, the admiral folded the quilt and tucked it at the foot of the bed. "I'll let you get some rest while I make something to eat."

"I'm not tired." It was an automatic response, honed to perfection after years of being confined to bedrest by Bones, but once he said it, Jim was uneasily aware of how childish it sounded.

His other self seemed amused. "I'm believe you aren't -- but the two of us always feel better for the rest in the end. Trust me, I know."

"But . . ." There were still so many unanswered questions. He had no idea what this place was, or why it was here, or why _he_ was here, or why his other self was here, or where the _Enterprise_ was, or whether anyone was still looking for him, or ---- _goddammit_.

"Just sleep for a bit. I can heat up some soup; it's about the only thing I can cook."

Nothing to do but give in with good grace. "Sure. Can you make --?"

"--Syrucuisan snapbean soup?" the admiral finished for him. "Of course."

Jim stared at him. "That is so creepy."

"So perhaps our preferences are the same, even across time," the older man mused. "We can compare notes later. For now, try to give your brain a chance to heal." With that, he left the room, closing the door gently behind him.

Jim waited until the steady footsteps died away before he slipped out from beneath the covers and wandered over to the window. It was twilight, and the sparsely-wooded hills around the cabin looked exactly the same.

He shivered, pressing his nose against the glass as he strained to see up into the sky, irrationally hoping for a glimpse of his ship. The crew were up there somewhere, looking for him, and they'd find him; they always did.

He tried not to think about the fact that apparently, in another universe. they hadn't.


	3. III Continuum

_A/N: Well, here's Chapter Three. Its alternate subtitle was In Which the Crew of the Enterprise Faces Down a Huge-Ass Strand of Galactic DNA -- therefore, it's about the crew. _

_I usually like sticking with just one POV, but I felt that the whole story couldn't be told if I stayed with the Jims the entire time. I think I like writing Spock's voice even more than Kirk's, since it's a great opportunity for exercising my vocabulary mad skillz. The next chapter, however, will go back to Jim in the Nexus. _

_Thanks so much to everyone who's commented or added me to story alerts and favorites! I'm not sure what the reception for this chapter will be, since it's about 2% Spock woobie-ishness and 98% Trekkie technobabble. (I'm an English major, so I know jackshit about physics and theoretical mathematics.) Please let me know what you thought, and thanks for reading!_

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**III. Continuum**

_In Which Commander Spock Discovers that the Laws of Physics Can Indeed Be Changed_

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"Mr. Chekov, report."

The young navigator was startled by the curt command, fumbling with the controls at his station before he found the correct slide. "Ah, not'ing to report, sir. Sorry."

Spock's hands were concealed behind his back as he stood at the science station, so he allowed himself the luxury of clenching his fingers into fists in reaction to this not-unexpected information. His nails bit sharply into fleshy palms. "It is irrational to express regret, Mr. Chekov, as you clearly have no control over the data you report to me."

"Sor --" Chekov swallowed the apology and turned back to his monitor, worrying his lower lip. "I mean, to find some'ting I will try harder. I try wery hard, sir."

A reply to that declaration was unnecessary. Everyone on the _Enterprise _had been on prolonged duty, working tirelessly in an attempt to find even the smallest scrap of data. Initially, Spock had difficulty convincing the senior bridge crew to leave their stations for the change of beta shift, and he was finding the task more strenuous as the days wore on. Where there had once been only a united sense of determination, there was now an unpleasant edge of desperation to the endless scans and reports.

Chekov seemed to be awaiting some sort of affirmation, but Spock kept his silence. He would not offer reassurances when he had none to give.

Nyota gave him an uncertain glance, and Spock evaded her perceptive eyes as he returned to the captain's chair. He was aware that his behavior was not controlled at the moment, but no amount of meditation could eliminate the anxiety that had become his constant companion in recent weeks.

He did not like sitting in the captain's chair, providing the final judgment on matters that affected all four hundred and forty-five members of the crew. It left him uneasy and -- if he were inclined to assign an emotion to it -- irritated and not particularly confidence-inspiring.

Considering the amount of training he had received at Starfleet combined with his own natural talents, he was perfectly capable of command; he simply did not care for the sensations it stirred up. Being the figurehead of such a ship meant that the fears and concerns of the crew were directed subconsciously to him. It was a crushing attack on his mental barriers, sufficient to give Surak himself a splitting headache.

He was not the captain. He knew it and the crew certainly knew it, and there was a distinct though unspoken hesitation from those around him when he gave his orders. Any other commander might have seen it as a sign of insubordination, but Spock believed he understood -- Captain Kirk ran his ship with a ridiculous mix of informality and eccentricity, and it _worked_ in a way which Spock had long ago acknowledged was impossible to comprehend.

After two years functioning under a command style which could never succeed for anyone but James Kirk, no other person could take possession of that chair without throwing the entire ship into disarray. The crew functioned perfectly, precisely, as any Federation vessel ought to. Orders were carried out with the usual efficiency, but there was a lack of cohesion. Anyone with a rudimentary grasp of mechanical engineering understood that in a mechanism powered by gears, one single damaged cog could slow or even stop the motion of the entire machine.

Spock allowed himself the brief indulgence of amusement at the thought. The metaphor was apt, but he rather doubted that Jim would appreciate being compared to a cog.

The bridge kept its vigil of silence broken only by the occasional murmur of Nyota's voice as she answered incoming transmissions and the appearance of Yeoman Rand with a data-PADD. Spock read quickly over the morning's compiled reports, and the review served to increase the rising tension within him; by all standards, he should have been focusing the ship's efforts on their unfinished mission.

The _Enterprise_ was under standing orders to investigate an apparent upsurge of Alucanean contraband. The merchandise, including certain components used in engineering for smaller Federation-manufactured vessels, had been tampered with before transport, draining the products' longevity in order, presumably, to increase profits for the sellers. A malfunction in these defective parts had caused a Fleet shuttlecraft ferrying refugees from Ilovur to explode en route, killing the crew and all eleven passengers -- including four Ilovuri children. Pressure from around the quadrant to stop the spread of the black market infestation had resulted in the _Enterprise_'s assignment, and Captain Kirk had led the ship into this quadrant in pursuit of a lead from a Starfleet informant.

This mission's success was of importance to potentially hundreds of innocent beings, yet Spock was shamed by his inability to focus on his orders now. Exactly two point four weeks ago, intergalactic safety and trading regulations paled before the fact that the captain of the _Enterprise_ had vanished.

They had just approached the orbit of an uninhabited ring of asteroids when Captain Kirk disappeared without a single blast of energy or the visible matter particles of a transporter beam. One moment he had been there, the next moment he had not.

The bridge had been catapulted into chaos; it had taken exactly forty-seven seconds for Spock to recover his equilibrium sufficiently enough to call for a ship-wide search for the captain. The search had revealed nothing -- Kirk was not on board. A scan of the nearest asteroids had been similarly unfruitful, and the intervening weeks' scans had offered up no further clue.

The shrill whistle of the inter-ship com provided a welcome distraction; Spock pressed the button. "Commander Spock here."

"Commander, I've good news for ye!" Mr. Scott crowed, his voice distorted by the crackle of the transmission. Nyota made a small sound in her throat and Lieutenant Sulu swiveled around in his chair. Spock steeled himself against the barrage of raw emotion that spiked around the bridge.

"Some of the lassies down in the physics lab think they might have found somethin'. I dunnae quite understand it all meself, but Phhi'w'e is dead-set on it," the engineer continued, speaking so quickly that it was difficult even for Spock's Vulcan ears to pick up every burr and roll.

"Elaborate, Mr. Scott," Spock said, modulating his tone very precisely. "What has Ensign Phhi'w'e found?"

"Why, our missin' laddie, o' course."

A collective intake of breath was the bridge's response, and Spock shifted to his feet before he was aware that he had moved. "The Captain -- where is he?"

There was a pause. "Weel, we haven't pinpointed him _exactly_ yet, but Phhi'we's positive that they have a good theory. . . "

"Commander Spock," Lieutenant Sulu said suddenly, "I'm picking up some strange readings. There's something up ahead ---"

"Onscreen," Spock ordered, gracefully reclaiming his seat. "Mr. Scott, hold for a moment."

A beep, a muted flash, and the front screen filled with a view from the aft sensors. The black expanse of empty space behind them was empty no longer: a massive cloud of white matter twisted across the screen and beyond. It looked vaguely like a twisted satin ribbon, appearing solid rather than gaseous.

"What _is _that?" Nyota breathed.

Spock stared at it for a moment, fascinated. "I do not know. Lieutenant Jhadav, the readings." He itched to retake his place at the science station and summon up the information, but he forced himself to wait patiently; Jhadav was already typing codes into the monitor, fingers darting over the keys.

"Here it is," the science officer announced as the computer spat out its preliminary report. "It appears . . ." he trailed off, and wide, startled eyes flashed up to meet Spock's.

"The readings, Lieutenant," Spock repeated when Jhadav didn't speak.

The lieutenant swallowed thickly. "I . . . It appears that . . . um, there's nothing out there. Sir."

"Specify."

"Visually something is there," Jhadav said helplessly, turning back to the screen, "but according to our sensors, the energy in a radius of 100 light years is unchanged. That thing that we see -- it has no mass, no energy output, no detectable temperature, no polar particle composition . . . Going by the readings, sir, it doesn't exist."

Spock punched the com button with rather more force than usual, ignoring the tableau of shocked faces around him. "Mr. Scott, collect Ensign Phhi'w'e and meet me in lab station C2."

"Aye, sir."

"Lieutenant Uhura, send standard transmissions in the direction of the anomaly," he continued, rising from his chair and heading for the turbolift. "Lieutenant Jhadav, keep a continuous watch on the sensors and alert me if there is the slightest change in readings. And Mr. Sulu, you have the conn."

* * *

Lieutenant Scott and Ensign Phhi'w'e of the Physics Department were already seated at the conference table when Spock walked into the lab. Scott came to his feet but the Hayaltian remained in her chair, blue antennae and six iridescent eyes blinking on their long stalks in a gesture of respect.

There was no reason to waste valuable time on pleasantries -- Spock came directly to the point. "Ensign, Lieutenant. What is it that you have discovered?"

"Ensign Gagliano found it, sir," Phhi'w'e explained, antennae jerking with excitement. "We were reviewing the records of all scans through the database on the day Captain Kirk disappeared, and Marianne noticed that there was the slightest flux in electrical charge at precisely the time that the captain was taken from the bridge. It was so miniscule a change that no one saw it the first time we went through the database, but it's definitely there, sir -- we checked three times."

Spock's mind was already picking through the information before him, sorting through the implications. Moving swiftly to the nearest computer, he entered his personal code and identification.

"Commander Spock, proceed," the computer intoned coolly.

"Computer, collect the data from all port sensors taken within the last half-hour and scan for electrical fluxes matching the data collected on Stardate 2261. 41 at 1302 hours."

"Processing request."

Scott rose and joined Spock at the console. "Ye think this has to do wit' the lad -- I mean, ye don't think it's jest somethin' that can be attributed to normal variation?"

"I do not believe in coincidences, Mr. Scott. If the flux occurred at precisely the instant that the Captain disappeared, then they are indeed related." Spock did not offer up any of the theories that were currently spinning through his mind; he took advantage of the pause to center himself, locking down the irrational hope that was battering against his controls.

The computer beeped. "Match located. Stardate 2261. 57 at 0923 hours. Flux of 0.021 ammeters."

"Exactly the same!" Ensign Phhi'w'e exclaimed, her antennae waving so wildly that they were blurring at the tips. "0.021 ammeters is too small a charge to be attributed to the normal flux that takes place when someone is beamed away, Commander."

Spock was already well-aware of this fact, but he let it pass without comment. "Then it must be attributed to something else." He approached the console again. "Computer, pipe down the image from the bridge holoscreen."

"Processing request."

"Mother Mary's knickers, what the hell is that?" Scott blurted out.

"I believe it may the source of our electrical flux. This appeared just moments ago on our sensors. It is the match to your data, Ensign." Spock stepped graciously to the side as engineer and physicist crowded around the console, studying the image on the little monitor intently.

"I've never seen anything like it," Phhi'w'e murmured with all the awe of a good scientist. "Look at the form of it! Computer, magnify." She pointed at the screen. "See those spirals -- it looks almost like a double helix."

Scott chuckled uneasily. "So we've stumbled across a giant strand o' galactic DNA? Aye, we do find the queerest things out here."

The levity was inappropriate, but then Spock had often observed the phenomena of so-called 'gallows humor' in his human crewmates. "I believe Ensign Phhi'w'e is merely referring to its unique shape, Mr. Scott. It is not deoxyribonucleic acid. Rather, it appears to have no substance at all. Computer, locate bridge science station report 75A34 and send to console 3-C2." He waited until the report was up on the secondary screen alongside the image. "Lieutenant Jhadav took these readings as soon as the anomaly appeared."

"I don't understand," Phhi'w'e said, straightening away from the monitor. "How is this possible? This doesn't exist."

"Of course it does, lassie," Scott corrected gently. "It's right in front of our noses."

"But not according to these numbers." Distress was evident in her quivering eyestalks. "Not according to the laws of physics!"

Scott patted her shoulder. "I've seen a mess of strange things in my life; we may not be able to change the laws 'o physics, lass, but the universe surely can. According to these numbers, it doesnae exist -- but according to our eyes and the electrical pulse, it does."

_Illogical_, was Spock's instinctive reaction, but the engineer's conclusion resonated with a note of truth. He had no choice but to agree with Mr. Scott; the conclusion was illogically . . . logical.

Perhaps he had spent too much time among humans.

"So what does this all mean?" Scott asked, tactfully letting Phhi'w'e have a moment to compose herself. "What does it mean for the cap'n?"

"I can offer nothing concrete at this stage, but I believe the captain's disappearance was the result of this electrical surge within the . . ." Spock paused, unsure of what to term the anomaly.

"Ribbon," Phhi'w'e supplied helpfully.

". . . within the ribbon," Spock finished, with a nod of acknowledgement for the ensign. "The spike of energy we experienced on the bridge may be due to the displacement of matter from the loss of the captain's mass."

"Which means?"

"Bear in mind that this is still purely theoretical, but it may be reasonably assumed that the spike was the exact displacement of the captain. The mass we lost on the bridge was replaced by energy from the ribbon. In order for that to happen, there would have to be an exchange equal to that displacement within ---"

"Within the ribbon," Scott interrupted, appalled. "Are you saying that the laddie's been sucked into open space?"

"I am saying that it is possible that there was an exchange of matter between the _Enterprise_ and the ribbon, and Captain Kirk was replaced by the electrical spike."

"So where is Captain Kirk?" Phhi'w'e ventured.

Spock felt the sharp tingle of fear that had been mercilessly contained behind the locks of his control, creeping tendrils of panic that tugged at him persistently. The full implications of this exchange were only now beginning to occur to him: if his theory was correct, then Jim, stripped of even a simple environmental suit, had been pulled into a mass-less, temperature-barren, atmospherically-inhospitable anomaly crackling with electrical impulses . . .

"Would it possible to conduct a more specific matter scan?" Spock said, ruthlessly shoving the fear into the deepest reaches of his consciousness. "Perhaps by scanning each individual section for electrical charge we may be able to detect ---" _A body. _''--- the captain."

"Yes, of course!" Phhi'w'e straightened up with renewed purpose. "If we scan one ammeter at a time, we should be able to pick him up quickly. Let me put in some calculations." She made a beeline for the computer, typing in a series of formulas. "Let's see . . . one ammeter . . ." She paused. "The ribbon has no mass, sir."

"Och, that's easy enough to get around, lassie." Scott joined her at the console and added in his own formula.

"Processing request." The computer offered up the results in a scant thirty seconds.

Ensign Phhi'w'e's antennae drooped. "Oh. Oh, my, I . . . " She looked up at the two men, eyelids blinking rapidly. "If the calculations are accurate, Commander, it would take exactly fifty-two years, two months, three weeks, and four days to comb through the ribbon."

Spock tamped down violently on his impulse to slam a fist through the computer's blinking screen. "Very well. Return to the lab, Ensign, and pass along my commendations to Ensign Gagliano for her work."

"Yes, sir."

Scott waited until the doors slid shut again. "Shall I start runnin' the scans, Commander? I'll have my lads on it in five minutes."

"That is not necessary, Lieutenant," Spock said quietly, flicking off the screen with a calm he did not feel. "We will not run any scans." He did not need to look at Scott to know that the engineer was staring at him with disbelief.

"What? Commander, ye cannae be thinking of letting go now. If he's in that ribbon ---"

"Speculation, Mr. Scott," Spock interrupted coolly. "With our current technology, it is impossible to determine where Captain Kirk may be located, if he is there at all. Beyond that, the _Enterprise _has lingered in this area for over two weeks in defiance of Starfleet protocol."

"With all due respect, bugger protocol. Ye know the Cap'n would nae care for protocol if it were any o' us floatin' about in space."

"That is most likely an accurate assessment, but I am not Captain Kirk, and therefore his decisions cannot be transposed onto my own."

Scott's face flushed. "Chrissakes, man, if there's even a _possibility_ that the laddie might be there . . . "

"You are dismissed, Mr. Scott."

The engineer's color deepened as he stepped back. "I beg yer pardon."

Spock had already pardoned the outburst of temper; it was illogical to expect proper restraint from his shipmates, and the occasional lapse could be forgiven. "Report to me immediately if you discover anything else that may be helpful to us."

"Aye, sir." Gathering up his injured dignity, the engineer left Spock alone in the silent room to contemplate the peculiar human emotion called 'despair.'


	4. IV Fight or Flight

_A/N: I had far too much fun over Spring Break, so this post is much later than I thought it would be -- my apologies. _

_Thanks to all of you who are reading/reviewing/favoriting/etc! I really appreciate the feedback -- criticism is always welcome. _

_Disclaimer: Alas, I have no rights to the Star Trek franchise._

* * *

IV. Fight or Flight

_In Which Jim Gets Into an Argument With Himself_

* * *

There was something surreal about sitting in front of an old-fashioned fireplace in a rustic cabin, bare feet propped up on the grate as you split a tureen of lukewarm soup with your inter-dimensional counterpart -- Jim just wasn't sure whether it was the good kind of surreal or the what-the-shit-I-don't-even-know kind of surreal yet. Anyway, the other him seemed pretty relaxed, all circumstances considered, so he tried not to look as terrified as he felt.

Forcing another mouthful of soup down his throat, Jim cast around for something to say. Initially there had been too many questions to ponder, but now the awkwardness was setting in. Technically, he was talking to _himself_, and if that wasn't fricking weird, he didn't know what was.

"So, uh, Admiral," Jim's eyes dropped down to the half-empty bowl in his hands, "thanks for the soup. It was . . . great."

The admiral lifted one craggy brow in a way that was utterly Spockian. "Sure. And call me Jim; 'Admiral' sounds stuffy."

"But _I'm_ Jim."

"Okay, 'Kirk' then. That work for you?"

"Yeah." Blowing out a nervous breath, Jim shifted, turning his face back to the warmth of the fire. "Is this as weird for you as it is for me?" he blurted out, wondering if the sudden ache in his stomach was the result of that godawful soup. "I mean, I'm _you_. Isn't that freaking you out a little?"

There was a brief pause, and then a huff as the admiral slipped from his chair to hunker down on the carpet next to Jim. His solid presence was strangely reassuring.

"I wouldn't say that I don't think this is weird," he said thoughtfully. "When you first showed up on my lawn, I wondered if I'd finally gone crazy." That smile -- a shade softer than the smirk Jim employed so well -- flashed at him briefly. "I've been lonely for a long time, so being crazy didn't seem to so bad after all if I meant I could have some company for a change."

"You accepted the whole 'alternate dimension' thing pretty fast."

"I have a little practice with alternate dimensions," the admiral said simply.

"Yeah, but I could've been some shapeshifting imposter or something; we've come across a couple of those already in this universe."

"You weren't sporting a goatee, so I guessed that you didn't mean me any harm."

"What?"

The admiral laughed. "Never mind. Jim, I'm sure you're curious -- go ahead and ask me anything. We've got plenty of time."

"Tell me about this place," Jim said at last. Other questions could wait -- he wanted to know where the hell he was.

"I should have known you'd pick that." The admiral set his bowl and spoon to the side and sighed, folding over until his elbows were propped on his knees. "To the best of my knowledge, this appears to be some sort of . . . alternate reality. Not another dimension," he amended quickly, when Jim opened his mouth to protest. "More like a . . . simulation of life."

"In what way?"

The admiral scuffed one stockinged foot into the carpet. "It's like this planet tries to recreate a person's idea of paradise. When I first came here, I was free to explore -- I could hike and fish and enjoy the peace, and I was given . . . company. I was content."

"You were suckered into it," Jim corrected, studying the older man's face curiously. "Some kind of memory-swiper?"

"Perhaps."

"But you remember now. What changed?"

The admiral chuckled. "I was a starship captain, Jim. Do you really think either of us could be happy staying put in the same place for very long, doing the same things, seeing the same sights day after day? It was driving me crazy, and as soon as I realized it wasn't real, it all disappeared. The people, the cabin, even my horse. It was all illusion."

Jim's eyes narrowed. "But here -- the cabin, all of this -- it's all here now."

"Yes," the admiral agreed. "I don't know what happened after everything disappeared; it came back. It always comes back, but I was alone after that."

"You're aware of what this place really is," Jim protested. "How could you have still retained that, when someone could have wiped your memory again?"

The admiral shrugged.

"For that matter," he continued, "how in the hell am _I_ still myself? Shouldn't my memories be wiped out too?"

"I think it feeds off information, images in our heads -- this forest, it looks exactly like the Black Hills. Exactly, right down to the grass and flowers. And we are the same person, so maybe our memories coincide."

"It takes images from your mind and duplicates them?" Jim processed that for a moment. "Okay, say that's really what's happening. Why? Who's taking the information?"

"I wish I knew."

"And you're the only one -- the two of us are the only people on this planet? There's no one else?"

"As far as I know, yes."

"Then shouldn't my memories have created something different? I mean, I've never been to the . . . what did you call it?"

"The Black Hills," the admiral finished for him. "Didn't our father take you and Sam camping there? We went almost every shore leave in the summer."

Jim's throat closed up, but he managed a succinct shake of the head. _Not now_ . . . there was time for that later. _Focus, Jim. _

"How did you know I wasn't another illusion?"

The admiral smiled. "As soon as you fell into the river, I knew you weren't. Paradise doesn't usually involve bleeding strangers."

"I don't understand." It was becoming more and more difficult to keep a lid on his frustration. He wanted to get back to his lady, goddammit. Who knew what this thing had done to the _Enterprise_, if it had the power to suck him into some ass-backwards planetoid? And the crew -- what if his crew been pulled into this with him?

The admiral seemed to sense an impending tantrum; his back straightened, slightly-stooped shoulders thrown back. It was pretty intimidating, and Jim's own posture corrected itself unconsciously in response. "Did you see anything strange before you were drawn in? Any abnormal readings, or flux in the gravitational pull?" His don't-you-shit-around-with-me-boy tone was a dead ringer for Komack on his prickliest days. Did they _teach_ admirals that voice or something? Maybe there was a fucking manual.

"No." Jim felt the most absurd urge to salute, and it pissed him off. "I think we would have noticed if some giant planet popped out in front of us. Everything was fine until I got warped into purgatory.

"Look, Kirk, I have to get back," he insisted, hating himself a little for the note of hysteria in his voice. "I can't stay here, I have a starship to run, for God's sake! If the _Enterprise_ is even still in one piece. I don't even know how long I've been gone!"

"It's impossible to calculate the relationship of time in here and time out there," the admiral lifted his hand away and pinched the bridge of his own nose in a gesture of helpless frustration, "but it's probably been a few days, a few weeks, by now."

"Wonderful." Anything could happen in a few weeks. Spock had probably flipped his shit by now, in that crazy yet logical shit-flipping way he had, and if Jim knew Bones at all, the good doctor was either spending his days pestering Spock about the rescue or getting completely smashed in the privacy of his office.

When it became apparent that Jim wasn't going to say anything more, the admiral hauled himself to his feet with a grunt and bent to collect the dishes. "I'll clean this up. Make yourself at home."

For the first time, Jim thought he understood why Bones claimed he had a warped sense of humor.

* * *

"So, uh, tell me more about your time."

The admiral did that eyebrow-thing again as he lowered himself back down next to Jim. "Do you think I should? I don't want to send our timelines spinning onto divergent paths because I said too much."

Jim snorted. "It seems to me like our timelines have already diverged -- I'm in a time paradox, so I don't think the time-stream can get fucked up much more than it is already."

"True," his other self conceded.

"So, am I still in Starfleet in your universe? Tell me I'm not going to spend my twilight years playing bingo."

"I just retired; I was giving my last press conference on the _Enterprise-B _when this," he swept one arm around the cabin, "happened. I should have known that the trouble wasn't going to stop because I hung up my uniform."

"_Enterprise_-_**B**_? What the hell happened to the _Enterprise_-_**A**_?"

"I might have . . ." He coughed and fidgeted. ". . . blown her up a little."

Jim was aghast. "You blew up our lady?!"

"It was necessary," was the rather defensive explanation. "I won't go into details, but believe me, I had no other choice." His voice softened. "And it was worth it."

Jim was speechless, picturing that shiny hull being ripped apart, wires and nodules and tubes flung into the cold depths of space as his ship bucked in her death throes. Well, now he knew how he would die: Scotty was going to _murder _him. "I can't believe I'm going to kill my beautiful girl!"

"You probably won't," the admiral mused. "As you said, the timelines are divergent. I doubt that the exact set of circumstances that we faced then will occur here." He smiled, but the gesture wasn't meant for Jim -- it had the air of someone enjoying a private joke. "And old friend of mine could have given us the precise statistical likelihood, but I can tell you that the chances are slim."

Jim laughed. "Your Spock gave estimates down the thousandths too?"

The strangest expression flashed across the older man's face. Wistfulness? Regret? "I take it our respective crews aren't any different from universe to universe."

"Probably not." It was weird enough to think of two Spocks and two Kirks living in the cosmos, but two Sulus? Two Uhuras? Damn, the very thought was making his headache return.

Still, they didn't seem to be mirror images, if the Spocks were anything to go by. The Ambassador was a different person than Jim's Spock -- he was more _human_, calm without seeming cold, soft-voiced, with kind eyes. And _his_ Spock -- his Spock wasn't like that, not really. His Spock wasn't anything like that charming old bastard.

And fuck, now Jim _really_ wanted to get back to Spock.

"Well, I think I've had a long enough vacation now. What would you suggest for our first move?"

The admiral cut a glance over at him. "You've cooked up some sort of crazy escape plan, right?"

"Actually, I was hoping you did."

"I'm afraid not," the old man sighed. "There isn't anything to work with in this place. Too bad our vision of paradise doesn't include a communicator and a private shuttlecraft."

"So what, we're just supposed to sit here?" Jim demanded. "We need to find some way out of this . . . this clusterfuck. I mean, we got in, didn't we? So there has to be an exit door somewhere."

"If there is, I haven't found it," was the admiral's short reply, something in his tone warning the younger man that he was about five words away from losing his patience.

"Then we'll _make _one," Jim swore.

"And how do you propose we do that? How can we fight a figment of our imagination?"

"I don't know, but we'll figure it out. We can wing it." The two men glared at each other. "What? Don't tell me you didn't bullshit your way to the captaincy too." "That was a long time ago -- apparently, a _very_ long time ago. You reach a certain age and you can't pull miracles out of your ass anymore, son."

"So you're going to give up?" Jim paced along the fireplace with restless energy, rapping his fingers nervously against his thighs as he moved. "No, there has to be a way to get back to the _Enterprise_. Come on, you've got to give me something to work with, man."

"I don't know what you expect me to say. We can't just waltz out of this place when we get tired of it. It's impossible. It's all impossible."

"Bullshit! You just don't care anymore," Jim exploded. "Fine, don't care, but at least try to work with me. Don't you give a fuck about what your family and friends . . . "

"What family? What friends?" the admiral snapped. "Listen, Jim, this isn't my universe and it sure as hell isn't my timeline. Everyone I loved is _dead_. Seventy-eight years, remember?"

For a moment neither man spoke, the sound of the crackling wood unnaturally loud in the still room. Firelight played across their bodies and serious faces, and suddenly Jim realized how old his alternate self looked -- old and very tired . . . .

"I'm sorry." He nearly choked on the apology.

The admiral didn't look at him, flapping one hand in a familiar 'forget-about-it' gesture.

Jim tucked his chin against his updrawn knees. No Bones, no Spock, no Uhura or Sam or Pike . . . and no _Enterprise_. If he was stuck here forever, they would die too eventually, like everyone in the other universe.

Or maybe not everyone. A spike of excitement made Jim sit up and smile triumphantly, secure in his unbeatable logic.

"You're wrong, Kirk," he said, the words tumbling over themselves in his rush to get them all out, "there still _is_ someone for you to come back for. See, I wasn't all that freaked out by finding another version of myself because you're not the first one from your universe to end up here. Wouldn't you like to get out and see your Spock again?"

"_Spock?!"_

Jim jumped as leathery but still-strong hands gripped his arms tightly -- the admiral's eyes were wild, his body practically trembling with frantic energy.

"Spock is _alive_?" he hissed, shaking Jim a little. "Here, in this universe? How? For god's sake, where is he?"

"New Vulcan," Jim said automatically, "and do you think you could let go before you pull off my biceps?"

The admiral dropped his arms with a mumbled apology and started twisting his fingers together instead. "What do you mean 'New' Vulcan?"

Now that it was coming down to the point, Jim really didn't want to have to break the news -- hell, the whole thing had been traumatic for _him_, and he didn't want to give the poor old guy a heart attack or something. Was it even possible to die here in this mirage-world?

The admiral's voice, brisk and sharp, snapped him out of his thoughts. "Jim, focus. Where's Spock?"

"The new Vulcan colony. I didn't explain well enough the first time, when I was telling you about that fuckwit Romulan." Jim pointed helplessly at the chair. "Um, you might want to sit down for this."

"I'll stand," the admiral said, straightening up in preparation. "Please just get on with it."

"Nero went batshit after Romulus blew up, right? Well, the reason it blew up in the first place is because the Federation didn't get to it on time -- a scientist had created red matter, this substance that would create a gravity flux to suck the sun into a synthesized black hole and stop the explosion and save Romulus, but no one could get there in time. And the scientist who developed it -- um, it was Spock."

"And Nero went after him," the admiral said tonelessly.

"Yeah, but he didn't kill him," Jim was quick to reassure him. "Spock got sucked through the vortex too, along with the Narada, and ended up in this, _my, _universe. Nero didn't hurt him; he was marooned on this planet called Delta Vega, which is really fucking cold, but he saved me from this snow monster when my Spock decided to be a dick and was completely fucking illogical . . ." Jim stopped and took a deep breath, aware that he was rambling. "To make a long story short, Nero dropped a drill down onto Vulcan and injected red matter into the planet's core, and it sort of . . ." he swallowed thickly, " . . . imploded."

"Oh, God." The admiral's face was ashen. "Vulcan -- the whole planet, gone?"

"His mother too," Jim said softly. "He saved Ambassador Sarek and some of the Council, but the transporter didn't get a firm lock on her."

"Is he . . . has he . . .?" The question wouldn't come, and Jim took pity on him.

"I think he's okay. Or he will be." He paused. Which Spock was he even talking about now? "Spock -- your Spock -- is at the new colony now, helping rebuild. I talked with him a few months ago. He's alright."

But the admiral was shaking his head. "No, no he's not, not even if he looks like it. I know him. He's blaming himself. He'll never voice it, but he'll stew over it until it kills him." His face hardened with an expression that Jim was very familiar with, having seen it in the mirror more times than he count. "If we're going to escape, the first thing we need to do is find a way of communicating with the _Enterprise_," the admiral said crisply.

Jim didn't even bother hiding his grin. "When do we leave?"

"Right now. We're getting the hell out of here."

The grin widened. _Fuck, yes. _


	5. V Duty

_A/N: Again, my apologies for posting so late. Thanks so much to everyone who's been reading and reviewing -- I love you all in a purely platonic way!_

_Uhura finally gets some screen-time in this chapter -- she doesn't have an opportunity to be awesomely kickass at this point in the story, though, so I'm not sure whether I managed to get her characterization down very well. Please let me know what you thought.  
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_Disclaimer: Star Trek does not belong to me. Woe. _

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V. Duty

_In Which Spock Determines that Admiral Komack is an Ignoramus _

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If there was one facet of his hybrid duality that disturbed Spock above any other, it was his inability to purge himself of what his human companions called a 'temper.'

Generally he was capable of suppressing his impulses, meditating or quietly reciting Surak's tropes until he had achieved equanimity; but on the rare occasion, no amount of stern reflection could keep his anger bottled. When the barriers were removed, the result was usually disastrous. Not only did Spock suffer the indignity of having his mental weakness exposed, but loss of control disturbed him greatly.

It was not comfortable, and while the Captain had, in the early stages of their acquaintance, gained much amusement from provoking 'human' reactions, Spock never learned to enjoy the momentary slips himself. No one did him a service in trying to make him more human; it only hindered his ability to keep his two divided halves working in harmony. At some point within the last few years, Jim had apparently started to understand -- no one could say that the Captain was unintelligent, no matter how diligently the man tried to prove the opposite -- and he no longer pressed Spock for emotional responses. The freedom in Jim's private company, where he need not present himself as either Terran or Vulcan but simply as Spock, had resulted in perhaps the truest friend he had ever known.

And so Spock's fondness for Jim (and fondness it was; it was illogical to deny it) mixed with his regrettable habit of showing anger in moments of distress, made for a very volatile situation -- and the distress only increased, as the number of days since Jim's disappearance now numbered 19.4 exactly.

It did not help, of course, that a certain prominent Starfleet admiral was, as the ever-eloquent Dr. McCoy once declared, "A supercilious, ham-handed buffoon who couldn't find his ass if it was stitched onto his face."

It was not precisely how Spock would have phrased it, but it was accurate nonetheless.

"Message for Commander Spock from Starfleet Command." Nyota's exasperated voice fluted through the ship-wide intercom, and Spock paused at the closest comm-unit, having already formed a fairly likely hypothesis of what awaited him.

"Commander Spock here, Lieutenant Uhura."

"Admiral Komack is hailing us _again_ -- he's marked it 'urgent'. He seems to be pushing it through on his end, so I can't hold it much longer. Shall I put him in your quarters?"

Spock silently began reviewing the first of Surak's treatises on the methodology of logic. "I will receive it on the bridge momentarily, Lieutenant. Spock out."

As he boarded the turbolift, however, it occurred to him that it might have been wiser to take the message privately -- if Lieutenant Uhura could not stop the incoming message before he arrived on the bridge, the officer to receive the call would be Ensign Chekov.

Jim had made it a habit to have the junior officers on the bridge take over the conn at the times when no immediate threat was near; he had explained that the 'kiddies' needed to get some practice in the chair too, since the senior bridge crew could be incapacitated during a crisis.

The practice had a certain amount of logic in it, but it was entirely against Starfleet regulations. Even so, Spock was unable to correct the rosters to suit command rules when the opportunity arose. It seemed rather _final_ to interfere with the manner in which Jim ran his ship, even in his absence.

Hastening his steps, Spock entered the bridge, and Chekov scrambled back to his usual post, looking relieved.

Spock took his seat just as the message from Starfleet Command popped up on the holoscreen; Nyota shot him a look of apology, but Spock's attention was immediately arrested by the image on the screen.

Admiral Komack's stern eyes immediately zeroed in on the Vulcan seated in the captain's chair. "Commander Spock -- what a pleasure it is to finally make contact! The _Enterprise_ seems to be a remarkably difficult ship to get a hold of." The rebuke lacked any kind of subtlety, and Spock saw Nyota flush at the implied insult to her department.

"Subspace communication is not always reliable," Spock said, holding the admiral's gaze steadily. "Is there any particular matter you wish to discuss?"

"Indeed there is, but I will address it with your Captain. Get him on screen, Commander."

The sudden stillness of the bridge crew did not go unnoticed -- Admiral Komack's eyes narrowed, half-slits filled with suspicion. "Is something wrong? Where is Kirk?"

"He is not available at the moment, sir. I will attend to whatever matters require his attention in his stead."

"You have no right to delegate, Mr. Spock. I _will_ speak to Captain Kirk."

"The Captain is unavailable," Spock repeated. "He has contracted a severe case of Malingerian influenza and has been recuperating in an isolation chamber. The affliction is, as you say, 'catching', and Chief Medical Officer McCoy has made it clear that he is not to be disturbed."

Komack bristled. "Kirk is ill? Why did no one report this to Command?"

"His indisposition was unexpected and occurred very quickly. There was not time, and it seemed illogical to alert Command when the event was already under control."

For a moment neither Human nor Vulcan spoke, eyeing each other through the holoscreen. Spock's hands fisted against the armrests, but he carefully schooled his expression to reveal nothing.

Komack grunted. "Very well, Mr. Spock -- if you are in charge, I have new orders for the _Enterprise_. You are to proceed directly to the diplomatic conference on Cipithae. A packet with all the necessary details will be sent to your console within the hour."

A curious numbness seemed to saturate Spock's body; he felt the weight of a dozen discreet glances and knew with unpleasant certainty that everything was, as Jim might say, about to devolve into a 'shitstorm'.

"Admiral, if I may request that the Enterprise remain in the area until Captain Kirk is recovered . . . "

"Denied."

"May I know your reason?"

Komack frowned; Spock noted, somewhat incongruously, that the gesture punched rather unattractive furrows in his cheeks and brow. "No, you may not."

"Is the presence of the _Enterprise _so urgent that we must leave immediately? I believe the cruiser _Paha Sapa _is presently . . . "

"The orders are for the _Enterprise. _If another ship was wanted there, then I would have given the orders to another ship. Good God, you're as bad as Kirk when it comes to following direct instructions without questioning every goddamn detail!"

That inconvenient, human _temper_ chose this moment to make itself known, and Spock could no more have stopped it than he could have stopped himself from striking Shalev all those years ago. "Perhaps the questioning would not be necessary if these 'direct instructions' were based at least in some part on rational consideration. The _Enterprise _is not anywhere in the vicinity of Cipithae, when at least two other constitution-class starships are, and it is a clear waste of resources and energy to divert our present course in order to make a political statement. Sir."

For a moment no one spoke or even reacted, although the corners of Lieutenant Sulu's mouth appeared to be twitching rather suspiciously.

Admiral Komack straightened his shoulders, apparently at a loss for words.

"If I may suggest an alternative, Admiral ---"

"No, you may not!" he barked. "Another protest from you and I'll have you removed from command. You will take the course to Cipithae; I expect the _Enterprise_ to head out within 48 hours or I'll have you out of that chair before you can say 'dishonorable discharge!' Have I made myself clear?"

"Perhaps too clear, sir," Spock said coldly. "Lieutenant Uhura, cut the transmission."

The Admiral's face was a picture of flustered outrage before the screen darkened, replaced by the usual starscape. A collective groan spread through the bridge, and as Spock rose from his chair, he observed Nyota watching him intently. The subtleties of human expression were usually wasted on him, but his long familiarity with the lieutenant allowed him a greater understanding of her particular emotional range. She appeared alarmed and disbelieving, and perhaps slightly impressed.

She caught his eye and mouthed, 'Talk?' He shook his head emphatically before returning the conn to Ensign Chekov and vacating the bridge as swiftly as possible.

He did not dare to stop, moving through the corridors without pause until he stood before the Sickbay doors. It was not ever wise to visit this particular portion of the ship when his equanimity was compromised, but there was little choice in the matter today. Time was extremely limited, and meditation was a luxury he could ill afford.

Fortunately, Doctor McCoy was not attending a patient at the moment; he was bent over his desk, muttering under his breath as he scribbled on a PADD. Standing silently in the doorway of the office, Spock took a moment to disapprove of the doctor's tousled hair and unshaven jaw -- if the bags beneath his eyes were an indication, Dr. McCoy had not gotten the requisite amount of sleep as outlined by the Starfleet Health Services manual. Or perhaps he had. It was impossible to know, as the doctor generally looked as though he had gone directly from his bed to the medical bay.

Dr. McCoy glanced up and scowled. "If you're not gonna bleed all over the floor in the next five minutes, park your ass in a chair and wait for me to finish this damn paperwork."

It was little wonder, Spock mused somewhat sourly, that Dr. McCoy and Jim were such close companions -- only Jim would think it appropriate to give the coveted chief-of-medicine position to an ill-kempt, ill-mannered alcoholic.

"I prefer to stand." Nevertheless, Spock stepped to the side, clearing the doorway, and stood against the farthest wall.

The doctor glared. After a few seconds of shuffling the cluttered pile of PADDs on his desk, he tossed down his stylus and sighed loudly. "Can't concentrate with you skulking around in my office like a pointy-eared vulture. What d'you want?"

"I require only a moment of your valuable time, Doctor. I need you to enter records into the database detailing an illness that has kept Captain Kirk in an isolation chamber for the past week."

Dr. McCoy blinked rapidly before reaching up to rub his temples. "Listen, Spock, it's been a hell of a shift, and my tiny human brain is overloaded. I _thought_ you just said that you wanted me to falsify Sickbay registers."

"I don't see what the size of your neural tissue should have to do with your listening comprehension." Spock hesitated. As commanding officer, it should not be necessary for him to explain himself, but the doctor didn't seem to share that belief. "I informed Admiral Komack a few moments ago that the captain has contracted Malingerian influenza and therefore was not available to talk to him."

"Jesus Christ, Spock!" McCoy snorted. "I don't know whether to hit you or shake your hand. And I thought Vulcans didn't lie?"

"These were extenuating circumstances."

"Mmhm. Well, I suppose I can cook something up, but you know the admiralty will keep after this. I hope you have some sort of plan?"

Looking at the doctor's exhausted face, Spock felt the heavy weight of his responsibilities beginning to press at him again -- a pressure in his chest, a dark mass at the edge of his psychic energy. McCoy had been Jim's friend for many years, and despite all his faults, Jim had repeatedly spoken of his value as a confidante . . . "Admiral Komack has given orders for us to attend a diplomatic conference at the colony on Cipthae."

The doctor froze. "When?"

"Two days."

"You aren't gonna go, are you?"

"I seem to have little choice in the matter."

Dr. McCoy's eyes widened, and he flew up from his seat with a quickness that would have made a normal man flinch. "If you think Jim's dead, you're forgetting his record ---"

"I do not believe he is dead," Spock corrected.

McCoy paused, momentarily distracted. "You don't? Then . . . "

"I also know believe that it is presently unproductive and ultimately futile to continue to search for him. The variables are too changeable, and it is no longer viable to expend energy and valuable time for a rescue that will not be successful."

"Changeable variables, my ass, you goddamned walking calculator!" the doctor cried. "We're talking about _Jim_ here -- the odds _never _apply to Jim! You just said yourself that you think he's still alive out there."

"Alive, perhaps, but not in any position to be detected or rescued."

"And so -- what? We leave him out there to rot?"

"The appropriate, logical action to take ----"

"Damn your logic, and damn you too if you think that I'm going to let you do this to him."

Spock felt that familiar, alarming tension begin to climb. "Your opinions have been thoroughly noted, Doctor, but the responsibilities of command are mine."

"Unless I take you out of the chair," McCoy snapped, rather triumphantly. "I can declare you unfit for duty."

"You have no basis for such an action. My proficiency ratings are not in a range to cause alarm, and your own psychological state is questionable at the moment."

The doctor flushed. "Some of us actually give a shit when people we love are hurt. Jim's the closest goddamned thing you have to a friend, and this is how you repay him?"

It was both fascinating and ironic that words, perhaps the most fleeting of all forms of communication, had the incredible ability to inflict more damage than physical confrontation. "Doctor McCoy, you have said quite enough." His voice shook. "My . . . personal regard for Captain Kirk is irrelevant, and you will cease distracting me with inflammatory accusations. Attend to those records promptly."

Without waiting for an answer, Spock left the medbay, nearly colliding with Nyota at the turbolift.

"There you are!" she said. "Come and eat some lunch with me. You must be starving."

Too drained to argue, he allowed her to lead the way down to the officer's mess hall. It was thankfully empty except for a few scattered Beta shift crewmen, and Nyota urged him over to the food replicators. They said nothing as they collected their food and made their way to a table in the corner.

"Spock, what was all that?" Nyota inquired gently, sliding her plastic tray forward until it bumped up against his.

Nyota was refreshingly direct, an admirable quality that most humans lacked, but today Spock was more inclined to think it an inconvenience. "I do not know."

"The Admiral will keep even closer tabs on us from now on." Her slim brown fingers danced over her plate, rearranging the components in a precise, orderly manner he had always found vaguely endearing. "You offended him, and from what I understand, he's not just going to take it."

"I am well-aware of that," Spock said, flinching inwardly at the note of defensiveness in his tone. His controls were not fully restored yet.

"Oh, Spock, I'm not _blaming_ you -- Komack is an excellent administrative admiral, but he has the social skills of a wounded Klingon. Questioning direct orders isn't like you. Kirk does it all the time, I know, but that's . . . it's not your style. I'm not surprised he reacted the way he did."

Unfailingly honest, as usual. His behavior _had_ been appalling and unbefitting of an officer, but the seething indignation would not quite let him acknowledge that yet. An insult to Jim when the man was in grave danger was unforgivable, even if Komack had no idea of the true circumstances.

Nyota toyed with a few leaves of Terran lettuce before taking a bite. "What will you do?" she inquired, after it became clear that he was not going to provide her with a satisfactory answer.

"I confess I am at somewhat of a loss," he admitted finally, spooning chel'pei soup into his mouth without tasting it -- an anomaly, since the thin, spiced broth was his favorite dish and therefore usually savored. It occurred to him, as he swallowed, that he had not eaten in four days.

Nyota's fingernails tapped a nervous pattern against her fork. "Spock," she began haltingly, "if Kirk's . . . if he's really dead . . ."

"_He is not dead_."

She stiffened, and Spock turned away from her, struggling to contain the emotions that battered at him relentlessly. Nyota fussed unnecessarily with her dining utensils, giving him time to compose himself.

"I will not ignore orders from Command," he said, fighting the bleakness that wrestled with his control. "Remaining in this sector of space is no longer viable. The captain's disappearance will have officially registered, and the Enterprise must continue on to Cipithae."

"How long?" she asked, with an aching tenderness that rendered him incapable of looking at her directly.

"Two days, perhaps three, but no longer."

"Then we'll ramp up the search," she said confidently. "We can put everyone on the project, do some deep-space scans, try everything we can think of. We'll find him."

"We have been searching for the captain for approximately 19 Standard days. The likelihood of our discovering him in the next two is ---"

"Don't," Nyota interrupted. "Please, no percentages." She lightly pressed the flat of her palm against his arm. "Are you okay?"

He lowered his eyes. "I do not know what to say."

"Kirk's an infuriating, classless bastard with a hero-complex who nearly gets us all killed on a daily basis." She smiled then, a little sadly, and whispered, "I miss him too."


	6. VI Polarity

_A/N: This chapter was far too much fun to write -- the great thing about the ST movies (although they got progressively cheesier) was that Jim and Spock and their crew were heroes of the galaxy . . . and grumpy old men. It's just too fabulous and totally unique to the fandom. I mean, it's not like we get a doddering, eighty-year old Han Solo wandering around space and having adventures (or at least not that I know of). It takes balls to have your main characters star in the show at an age where they should be chasing kids off their lawns. God, I freaking love oldman!Kirk. _

_Apparently my account was being an ass a few weeks ago, and some of my replies to your reviews didn't get through the private messaging system. If you didn't receive a reply to your comments last chapter, please let me know -- I don't want to miss anyone. Thanks for reading!  
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_Disclaimer: Don't own Star Trek.  
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VI. Polarity

_In Which Jim Learns that Vulcan Mysticism Might Have Something Going for It_

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They'd been wandering in circles for days like a pair of clueless fuckwits. If there really was some sort of god/alien/mythical being pulling strings up there, it had to be laughing its supernatural ass off at them right about now.

"We passed this place three times already," Jim grunted, pausing at the edge of the ravine and wondering whether he should just fling himself off it and end his suffering.

Admiral Kirk's hand shot out and gripped his elbow, leading him away from the cliff. "Don't even think about it."

Reluctantly, Jim followed, letting his older self tug him on down the path -- footprints mingled in the dirt, shuffling together. Their gaits were different, he'd noticed: he moved quickly, loose-limbed and casual; the admiral was slower, but his strides were longer and confident in a way Jim didn't think he could emulate even if he tried.

They hadn't talked much, actually -- it seemed to Jim as if a little clock was ticking in the back of his mind, warning him to hurry, and judging by the pace he'd set, the admiral was feeling some pressure as well. The only thing they had discussed was Nero and the destruction of Vulcan; Kirk had seemed driven to know all the details of Ambassador Spock's life in the new universe, and once Jim had said all he could, the admiral hadn't asked anything more, choosing instead to walk even faster.

_Silence be damned_. Keeping his mouth shut had never been one of Jim's fortes. "Kirk, don't you think we should try somewhere else? Obviously we're not getting anywhere here."

Of course, that wasn't entirely true, as there was something seriously _wrong_ about this place, and all their tramping around the planet had reinforced his initial feelings of unease. Besides that, there wasn't much to do; this wasn't some sort of diplomatic fete or exploratory mission -- he couldn't charm his way out of this situation, and there wasn't anyone to punch. That didn't leave many options. Fear was nothing, but helplessness absolutely sucked.

"We could try," Kirk said after a moment of thought, "but if we haven't found any inhabitants or any sign of outside influence after all this time, it seems unlikely that there's anything out there."

"Now don't be pessimistic -- we don't believe in no-win scenarios, right?"

"I don't remember being quite so arrogant when I was your age."

"Seems to me that you're still pretty arrogant."

The admiral looked disgruntled.

_Way to crush the old man's spirit, dumbass. _"Look, I'm sorry," Jim sighed. "I just . . . I . . . man, I just want to get back to my ship. I can't stand this -- I hate waiting -- and my _ship_ ---"

"I know," Kirk murmured.

And it occurred to Jim that he _did_ know.

"Right," he said uncomfortably. They began walking again, and Jim noticed that the man was favoring his left foot slightly. "Do you need to stop for a minute?"

Kirk glared at him, and damn if Jim still didn't find that intimidating. "I'm old, not an invalid."

"Didn't say you were," Jim flashed him a shit-eating grin, "_Gramps_."

The admiral rolled his eyes but didn't argue when Jim parked his butt on a nearby patch of grass along the river. They'd been following it in the hopes that it might lead to a lake or a clearing of some sort. What exactly they'd do once they got there, of course, Jim didn't have the faintest idea. Kirk had been mumbling something about smoke signals.

Apparently Jim had early senility to look forward to.

"Maybe we shouldn't keep by the river, Kirk," he wondered aloud. "We could try going down toward those hills tomorrow and see if we have any luck."

There was no answer, and Jim realized that Kirk had gone off somewhere, probably to scout out the area for bears or some shit like that. Never mind that they hadn't seen any wildlife more threatening than a pheasant -- the guy was a regular boy scout.

Bitter curiosity churned in his gut when he thought of what those different quirks implied. He wanted to ask about what kind of life Kirk had had, what he'd been like as a kid, where he'd been before Starfleet . . . what kind of man his father had been.

Jim wouldn't ask now and wasn't sure that he ever would. A part of him wondered if this was one of those things that was just better not to know, that the knowing would hurt more than all the questions.

Pushing those thoughts away, Jim leaned over the stream and let the cool water lap against his fingers. It felt like water, it tasted like water, it even _smelled_ like water. He frowned, leaning closer to the water to watch a large, violet-blue fish of some sort coast lazily past his thumb.

"Do you think the _Enterprise _is out there?"

He jumped a little, not having realized that the admiral had returned. Trying not to let on how rattled he was -- because the last thing he and his ego really needed right now was losing a contest of courage to a sixty-year-old -- he looked over his shoulder and shrugged. "Of course." He paused. "Whether they're still in the same quadrant is another question."

The admiral was quiet for a moment. "Tell me about them," he said suddenly.

"Who? The crew?"

"Everything, everyone. Tell me what you've done and where you've been. Obviously you started out much earlier than I did in my universe, so we can't have come across the same things . . ."

Jim rolled back onto his side so he could look at Kirk. "I kinda suck at campfire stories."

_That _was bullshit, and both of them knew it. Kirk settled down next to him, folding his legs crisscross style with a groan of effort and a crackle of joints that made Jim wince. "So, about your crew -- does Chekov have a fetish for the Motherland?"

"Yeah." Jim grinned despite himself. "Russia this, Russia that; it drives Sulu frickin' crazy, but no one even tries to correct Pavel anymore."

Kirk suddenly looked a bit shifty. "You want to know something?"

Jim leaned in closer. "What?"

"He's messing with you."

"No way."

"He knows exactly what he's doing," the admiral said. "Gets a kick out of it, I swear to god."

"That little shit," Jim breathed. He threw back his head and let out a bark of laughter. "Well, fuck me sideways. Wait till I tell Bones about this." Still chuckling, Jim rolled back onto his stomach and let his hand dip back into the water -- a cold, unpleasant feeling bled into his insides, and he stilled. "Kirk," he whispered, suddenly tense and alert. "Look at this."

The older man didn't argue, immediately dropping to the ground and peering over the bank.

Jim's fingers were trembling, but he didn't dare move his hand as the violet-blue fish brushed up against his thumbnail before swimming away. "That fish," he croaked. "I swear that same exact fish went past me a while ago."

The two men exchanged glances before turning their attention back to the water. For several long, anxious seconds neither one moved.

It didn't take too long for another blue fish to swim blithely past Jim's hand, and Jim knew -- he fucking _knew _-- it was the same fish.

"It's repeating," the admiral said, sounding as shocked as Jim felt. "It's on a repeat, a loop."

Jim scrambled up onto his knees. "Follow it, hurry."

They ran, jogging alongside the water -- Jim didn't dare take his eyes away from the blue scales that glinted up at him. Calculations ran through his mind in streams as he tried to guess the fish's path, tried to figure out how it could return to one spot so quickly.

And then suddenly, he wasn't running anymore. He was on the ground, his chest burning, and Kirk's panicked voice was yelling in his ear.

"M'okay," he groaned, propping himself up on his elbows and blinking in an attempt to clear his foggy vision. "Ow."

Shifting to his knees, Kirk leaned over Jim's legs, stretching out his hand in front of him toward the nearest tree.

His hand disappeared, sliding right through the trunk.

The admiral jerked his arm back with a grunt of pain, but his hand was thankfully still attached. He flexed his fingers, looking equally fascinated and freaked out.

"What the hell was that?" Jim said.

"This is it," Kirk marveled, astonished and a little excited. "We're literally at the end of the world."

Jim closed his eyes. "Um, could that have been more vague? This isn't fucking Symbols and Linguistic Metaphors class. Plain Standard, please."

The admiral pointed at the water. "The fish vanished, and there's nothing else past this point. No water, no trees, no ground, no air -- you saw what happened to my hand. It looks like this place -- this _illusion_ -- actually has a physical boundary, and you slammed through it face-first."

"Cool." Jim rubbed his stinging chin. "So, what, this is some sort of . . . program? Like a computer program?"

"No, I don't think so." The admiral got his feet and offered a hand; Jim refused it, not quite ready to get up yet. "It doesn't seem that way to me," he continued, "and believe me, I've faced some interesting technology in my time. It seems more like a . . . virtual reality, like someone's idea of what life looks like." His face lit up with renewed energy. "It reminds me of a place we visited once. It was a pleasure planet, harmless in the end, but the entire world was an elaborate machine, a factory that took a person's thoughts or desires and made them real. But they weren't real, even though they physically existed.

"I mean, Bones was killed on that planet. I saw him get run through, and I could have sworn that it was real, but he wasn't even hurt. Not a scratch, and I watched him die."

Jim made a mental note to keep Bones away from pleasure planets. "You think this might be a machine?"

"No, not a machine -- I don't know what it is, but I don't think it's computer-generated. More like . . . universe-generated. Does that make any sense?"

"Sort of." Jim scrubbed his palms across his face before standing up carefully. "Let me see if I can sum this up: this planet we're on is actually some sort of physical illusion, and there's not really something on the other end that's controlling it, but it's fucking with the natural laws of physics so much that Scotty's brain would implode if he saw it."

"That sounds about right." Kirk gestured at the tree trunk. "And it also seems to have glitches."

"And if it has glitches, we can get out," Jim finished. He took a few shaky steps toward the tree. "What do you think is on the other side of this? Open space?"

"I wish I knew. When you walked into it, it looked like you were dissolving; I pulled you back, and then everything was in place again. You saw what it did to my hand."

"Well, whatever's on the other side, it's probably not hospitable -- it hurt like hell, anyway, and who knows what would have happened if I'd gone through it. Thanks for saving my ass, by the way," he added.

There was a wry little twist to Kirk's lips. "Don't mention it."

Jim paced for a while, needing an outlet for the restless energy that always plagued him, and Kirk let him walk in circles without comment, presumably riffling through his own thoughts for a solution.

A memory was gnawing at the edge of Jim's brain, just stubbornly beyond his ability to recall. That feeling -- the mixture of nausea and disorientation and free-falling adrenaline -- was too familiar to put aside -- a lurching, gut-churning feeling, like falling through a turbolift shaft, everything plummeting and weightless . . . . and then he remembered. "I know what's out there!" he blurted, his voice sounding far too loud in wake of such intense silence. "Well, not exactly, but when I first got zapped over here, I was stuck in limbo for a bit -- it's hard to describe. It was this absolute void, and I thought I was out in open space, but I was still breathing, so that was a definite impossibility, but then I tried to kick my way out -- I don't know how there was some kind of solid ground to stand on, but it was there," he paused long enough to suck in another mouthful of air, "and I sort of just fell through the bottom of whatever-it-was, and then I ended up crash-landing down here and you found me." Kirk's quizzical expression deflated his enthusiasm. "Uh, did that not happen to you?"

"Fascinating." Kirk tapped his chin twice before moving over to stand in front of the tree. "It sounds like some kind of intermediary portal between what's out there and what's in here." He hesitated. "Jim, what's _out there _is different for both of us. I came from one universe, you came from another, but somehow we ended up in the same place. Which universe would we arrive in if we were able to get out right now?"

_That _was a chilling thought, because Jim didn't particularly want to escape this place only to end up in a timeline where everyone he knew had already died. "I'd assumed . . . Wait. If we both arrived here, this has to be the connecting point between our two timelines, right?" His palms were beginning to sweat, and that tingling feeling was curling up his spine, that little spark that told him that he was about to have a _freaking epiphany_. "Maybe this isn't an illusion -- maybe it's just a bridge between universes."

"And the dates are different," Kirk added. "The time-streams are different enough that normal time-keeping doesn't apply."

And then all the pieces snapped together.

"This is a _time _vortex!" Jim crowed. "That place, that intermediary, must be the rift between your timeline and mine -- it's not a physical barrier, it's the absence of space-time!" Somehow they'd stumbled across a _temporal rift of space-time_ that wasn't in conjunction with a black hole but was the result of interconnecting parallel universes. That was fucking _mind-blowing_, and the (well-concealed) part of Jim Kirk that was an honest-to-god, bona fide genius was busy having a geekgasm at the possibilities.

"An absence of space-time," Kirk repeated. "How were you able to survive in a rift?"

"Beats me. Do you think we should try going through?" Jim eyed the tree, trying not to wince at the thought of inviting in that gut-rotting pain again. Still, it would be more than worth it if it meant escape.

His mouth tightening into a determined line, the admiral strode forward, and, before Jim could stop him, barreled directly into the trunk. His head and upper body disintegrated before Jim stumbled forward, grabbed his arm, and yanked him back. The two of them went tumbling back onto the grass, all important body parts intact.

"And Bones said _I_ had a martyr complex!" Jim hissed, rolling up onto his knees. "What the hell was that? Did you think you could just waltz straight through?"

The admiral didn't respond, frozen and stiff-backed, not responding even when Jim tentatively pushed his shoulder.

_Shit_. Was the guy having an aneuryism or something? "Kirk!" Jim said loudly, shaking him again. "Hey, Kirk, snap out of it! C'mon, man!"

Kirk's eyes flew open. "The bond," he said shakily. "It's still there, it's ---" He cut himself off. "The _Enterprise_ must be somewhere close. I could feel --" The sound that came out of his mouth was too close to a sob for Jim's comfort. "Goddammit, I thought it was _severed_. It had to have broken, it's been so long. I thought --"

"Whoa, geez, back up! What are you talking about? What was broken?"

Kirk blinked up at him, opened his mouth to say something, and then apparently thought the better of it.

Jim shook his shoulder again, gently. "Hey, it's okay. What happened just now?"

"Do you know anything about Vulcan telepathy?" Kirk said, apropos of nothing.

"Don't touch a Vulcan unless you want your mind read?"

The admiral groaned, scrubbing a hand through his hair. "This might be a problem."

Jim shifted awkwardly. "Why? What does telepathy have to do with anything?"

"I'll give you the condensed version: Vulcans are touch-telepaths, and all Vulcans form mental bonds as a tool for communication and social order. There are dozens of different kinds: every Vulcan has synapse connections to every other Vulcan in the community -- " Kirk flapped his hands impatiently, searching for the right words. "Vulcan societies are like a huge, interconnected web of mental links. The strength of the links vary with different relationships -- there are bonds between parent and child, friend to friend; there are family bonds and peer bonds and neighbor bonds and lovers' bonds, and they're put in place when a Vulcan is young. It keeps them anchored down and gives them a sense of unity and stability. Emotional control and shielding often depend on the health of a Vulcan's bonds."

It took a second for Jim to process the implications, but when he did, it felt like he'd been sucker-punched. "So when Vulcan was destroyed . . . ?"

"Imagine billions of mental links being ripped out of your brain within a few seconds," Kirk said grimly. "It's a wonder the survivors didn't die from telepathic shock." He took a deep breath. "What I'm trying to say is, mental connection is essential to Vulcans, and they're generally very close-mouthed about it to offworlders. The only reason I know about it is because," he shot Jim a sideways glance, "Spock and I had a bond."

"Spock?" Jim laughed nervously. "You're saying you had some kind of Vulcan mind-link thing . . . with Spock?"

"Yes."

"Well, that's weird. I can't believe Spock would let you do that." Jim remembered the gentle, almost _loving_, way the Ambassador spoke to him and then it didn't seem so weird after all. "So how did that work, sharing brains with each other? Could you hear him in your head? What did he think about?" Briefly, Jim wondered what it would be like to be inside _his_ Spock's head. Frustrating and unbelievably logical, probably. "Do Vulcans ever think about sex?"

"We didn't share brains, exactly," Kirk corrected. "Our minds were compatible and the initial link formed on its own. I couldn't hear him inside my head unless we . . . uh, melded and he chose to project his thoughts, but I could transfer a few short thoughts to him if I concentrated on it. Most humans _are_ psi-null."

"In other words, you could take it but you couldn't put out?" Jim frowned. "Did that sound dirty to you? It sounded dirty to me."

"A little," Kirk said absently. "Jim, have you ever melded with Spock before?"

"Yeah, but that's not the same, is it? I mean, I couldn't hear Spock's thoughts or anything. He could hear mine, but it was like there was a wall in front . . . " He trailed off, his body recalling the phantom sensation of Spock picking gently through his thoughts, threading around his mind and keeping him awake and alive while they waited for Bones to come and sew his guts back inside his body. It had been an utterly alien sensation, and, dulled by pain and blood loss, Jim hadn't been aware enough to fight the intrusion.

The second meld had been less traumatic and a hell of a lot less messy, and although Jim was fascinated with the sensation of having someone else in his head, the experience had been vaguely unsatisfying. There was a barrier between Spock's mind and his -- he felt the Vulcan's mental presence but nothing of his actual thoughts.

"So, you and Spock could share thoughts," Jim repeated, mulling over the idea.

The admiral swore softly. "If there was only some way I could get within range of Spock -- _my_ Spock ---"

"Could you contact him, if he was close enough?"

"Maybe. Probably." He rubbed at his temples, looking very tired. "It's been a long time, and I'm not certain whether this place has some sort of force field around it or not."

"Can telepathic signals usually broadcast through interference?"

"It depends on the configuration. Ion storms, particle clouds, yes. Space-time rifts -- I don't know."

Something was tickling at the back of Jim's mind again. "You said that your bond with Spock formed because your minds were 'compatible' and that you didn't even notice it at first."

"Yes." Kirk was curious, doubtful, but something was brightening in his eyes. "Do you ---?"

"Spock and I -- my Spock -- we could have formed a similar bond without either one of us knowing too. If you could show me how to do the mind-thought-transmitting-thing, maybe _I_ could get to him."

Kirk took a steadying breath. "We're not telepaths, Jim, but . . . " He paused. "It might work. How did you react to the melds?"

"I don't know. Weird, I guess, but not . . . bad, if that's what you mean. They did give me headaches, though."

"It's probably only a very shallow link," he said doubtfully. "I can teach you some meditation techniques and try to guide you through all the steps. It's a strange process, and it will probably be uncomfortable for you. The human brain really isn't formed for telepathy -- when Spock and I were linked, I spent two days out cold in a Vulcan hospital while my brain tried to cope with it. I always came down with headaches when we melded after that."

"Well, that sounds like fun. Why did you keep the link?"

Kirk's smile was secretive and just a little disturbing. "The benefits outweighed the disadvantages."

"Okay, so what am I supposed to do if by some miracle I really can get into Spock's brain? Give him directions and a map? He won't have the answers either, because somehow I think this is outside the realm of possibility even for _Spock_, and that's saying a lot."

"Give him some credit, Jim," Kirk said. "All you have to do is let him know you're out there -- maybe give him a general summary of what we know about this place. At least he'll know what we're dealing with here, and the two of us can keep working to find a way out in the meantime." The words were positive, but Kirk's tone was less than certain.

"You really think you can teach me to do this? Correct me if I'm wrong, but you're saying our only chance of getting out of here is giving Spock a telepathic comm call, and if he hangs up on me, we can't ever get the connection back."

"That's about it."

"Oh, god," Jim moaned, letting his head drop forward onto his knees. "We're fucked, aren't we?"

"Royally," the admiral said dryly.


End file.
